Summary

Becoming a household name was a long way off for KIC. Getting their message out to the masses and getting people`s buy in to help was hard for this small unknown organizaton. They knew that building support for their mission they needed to partner with a well known name that had a presence in their local area. They decided to join forces with Groupon`s G-Team. This is Groupon`s philanthropic initiative which aims to harness the power of their growing subscriber base and their business model of `collective buying` for community good. All G- Team campaigns have a "tipping" point" which is the critical mass of people needed - people pledge to give money or do something, but no one has to do a thing until the campaign crosses its people threshold. This approach allows the campaign to gain all the people needed to make it successful before anyone is asked to take any action.

The Background

Keep It Clean (KIC) is a new nonprofit organization based in Chicago, IL. KIC was the brainchild of two local boys that were bothered by the unsanitary condition of the river. They had a passion for taking care of the environment and felt there was no better place to start than their own city. Through the support of friends and family KIC was born. It was now time to have the community and neighboring cities become more engaged and understand KIC`s mission.

The Solution

KIC and groupon set up a deal that would run in Chicago`s edition of Groupon. The KIC deal on Groupon asked that 30people sign up for a "Clean the River" event for 3 separate weekends. It would run for 3 days to allow for maximum exposure and the opportunity to meet their goal. If they reached their goal Groupon and 30 people showed up to clean the river each weekend, Groupon agreed to contribute $1,000 to the event and obtain the endorsement and support of other local businesses in the area. The first day that Groupon ran the KIC deal it tipped off within 3 hours of being posted. For three consecutive weekends KIC had over 90 volunteers participating in the "Clean the River" events. Groupon donated the $1,000 to this event and KIC was on its way to growing into something larger.

Lessons Learned

By using the Groupon platform KIC was able to promote the cause to Groupon`s hug e subscriber base which is growing at a rate of 3 million new subscribers a month. This represented a small amount of effort for Groupon, but the leverage it provided enabled KIC to leverage the power of the Web abd Groupon`s consumer collective, promote its message to a wider audience, find volunteers, enlist sponsorships, and grow into something larger. The result was that KIC was able to get enough people behind the project to make it happen. In addition KIC had over 90 volunteers each weekend with many that came in from neighboring suburbs to help out. From the success of this campaign and events KIC has grown into a statewide program in Illinois with the endorsements of 2 large corporations.